Chlorophylls and bacteriochlorophylls, together with carotenoids, serve, noncovalently bound to specific apoproteins, as principal light-harvesting and energy-transforming pigments in photosynthetic organisms. In recent years, enormous progress has been achieved in the elucidation of structures and functions of light-harvesting (antenna) complexes, photosynthetic reaction centers and even entire photosystems. It is becoming increasingly clear that light-harvesting complexes not only serve to enlarge the absorption cross sections of the respective reaction centers but are vitally important in short- and long-term adaptation of the photosynthetic apparatus and regulation of the energy-transforming processes in response to external and internal conditions. Thus, the wide variety of structural diversity in photosynthetic antenna "designs" becomes conceivable. It is, however, common for LHCs to form trimeric (or multiples thereof) structures. We propose a simple, tentative explanation of the trimer issue, based on the 2D world created by photosynthetic membrane systems.

• Keywords
• bacteriochlorophylls, carotenoids, chlorophylls, excitation energy transfer, light-harvesting complexes, photoprotection, photosynthesis, photosystems, pigment-protein complexes,
• MeSH
• Bacterial Proteins chemistry   metabolism   MeSH
• Photosynthesis MeSH
• Protein Conformation MeSH
• Models, Molecular MeSH
• Protein Multimerization MeSH
• Energy Transfer MeSH
• Plant Proteins chemistry   metabolism   MeSH
• Plants metabolism   MeSH
• Cyanobacteria metabolism   MeSH
• Light-Harvesting Protein Complexes chemistry   metabolism   MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Review MeSH
• Names of Substances
• Bacterial Proteins MeSH
• Plant Proteins MeSH
• Light-Harvesting Protein Complexes MeSH

The effects of combining naturally evolved photosynthetic pigment-protein complexes with inorganic functional materials, especially plasmonically active metallic nanostructures, have been a widely studied topic in the last few decades. Besides other applications, it seems to be reasonable using such hybrid systems for designing future biomimetic solar cells. In this paper, we describe selected results that point out to various aspects of the interactions between photosynthetic complexes and plasmonic excitations in Silver Island Films (SIFs). In addition to simple light-harvesting complexes, like peridinin-chlorophyll-protein (PCP) or the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) complex, we also discuss the properties of large, photosynthetic reaction centers (RCs) and Photosystem I (PSI)-both prokaryotic PSI core complexes and eukaryotic PSI supercomplexes with attached antenna clusters (PSI-LHCI)-deposited on SIF substrates.

• Keywords
• MEF, SIF, biohybrid structures, photosynthetic complexes,
• MeSH
• Chlorophyll A metabolism   MeSH
• Spectrometry, Fluorescence methods   MeSH
• Formaldehyde chemistry   MeSH
• Photosynthesis * MeSH
• Photosystem I Protein Complex metabolism   MeSH
• Glucose chemistry   MeSH
• Carotenoids metabolism   MeSH
• Nanostructures chemistry   ultrastructure   MeSH
• Silver chemistry   MeSH
• Light-Harvesting Protein Complexes metabolism   MeSH
• Publication type
• Journal Article MeSH
• Review MeSH
• Names of Substances
• Chlorophyll A MeSH
• Formaldehyde MeSH
• Photosystem I Protein Complex MeSH
• Glucose MeSH
• Carotenoids MeSH
• peridinin MeSH Browser
• Silver MeSH
• Light-Harvesting Protein Complexes MeSH